This module runs in Term 2 and is available for students on a course where it is a listed option and as an Unusual Option to students who have completed the prerequisite modules.
Pre-requisite: ST346 Generalised linear models for Regression and Classification
Results from this module can be partly used to determine exemption eligibility in the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) modules CS1.
Modern applications of statistics to medicine are highly developed, and many medical research papers employ statistical techniques. Large numbers of statisticians are employed in medical research establishments, particularly in pharmaceutical companies and medical schools. Medical statistics continues to be a buoyant area for statistical recruitment. The course will explain why and how statistics is used in medicine, and study some of the statistical methods commonly used in medical research. We will include examples from our own research. The statistical techniques applied to medical data are also relevant in other applications.
Students will be given selected advanced research material for independent study and examination.
This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.
Study designs: cohort, case-control and survey designs; randomised clinical trials; adaptive clinical trial designs.
Analysis of censored survival data: Life tables; hazard and survival functions; Kaplan-Meier survival curves; parametric survival models, the proportional hazards regression model.
Systematic reviews and meta-analysis: Systematic reviews summarise evidence on particular medical topics; meta-analyses use statistical methods such as glms to summarise studies included in systematic reviews; publication bias and funnel plots; Cochrane reviews.
Infectious disease transmission models: Discrete vs continuous time models, final size distribution, fitting epidemic models to household data, links to survival analysis.
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
The books listed are suggestions. Some provide general background [1, 2, 3, 5, 11, 12, 16]; others are more focussed on statistical methodology [4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15]. In many cases, there will be other editions, which you can easily find through the library. I requested multiple copies of the most popular books; the essential material is in the older as well as newer editions. In addition, some e-books are now available through the library.
[1] D.G. Altman. Practical Statistics for Medical Research. Chapman and Hall, London, 1991.
[2] P Armitage and G Berry. Statistical Methods in Medical Research. Blackwell, Oxford, 2 edition, 1987.
[3] M Bland. An introduction to medical statistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2 edition, 1995.
[4] M Borenstein. Introduction to meta-analysis. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, U.K., 2009.
[5] M J Campbell and D Machin. Medical statistics: a commonsense approach. Wiley, Chicester, 3 edition, 1999.
[6] D. Collett. Modelling binary data. Chapman & Hall, London, 1991. 0412387905.
[7] D. Collett. Modelling survival data in medical research. Chapman & Hall, London, 3 edition, 2014.
[8] D R Cox and D Oakes. Analysis of Survival Data. Chapman & Hall, London, 1984.
[9] D R Cox and E J Snell. Analysis of Binary data. Chapman & Hall, London, 2 edition, 1989.
[10] AJ Dobson and AG Barnett. An introduction to generalized linear models. CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2008. 3rd ed.
[11] JV Freeman, SJ Walters, and MJ Campbell. How to display data. Blackwell (BMJ books), Oxford, 2008.
[12] S M Gore and D G Altman. Statistics in Practice. British Medical Association, London, 1982.
[13] M.K.B Parmar and D Machin. Survival analysis: a practical approach. Wiley, Chichester, 1995. 0471936405.
14] G Schwarzer, JR Carpenter, and G Rücker. Meta-analysis with R. Springer, Cham, 2015.
[15] AJ Sutton, KR Abrams, DR Jones, RA Sheldon, and F Sung. Methods for meta-analysis in medical research. Wiley, Chichester, 2000.
[16] E R Tufte. The Visual display of quantitative information. Graphics Press, Cheshire,
1983.
View reading list on Talis Aspire
Sourcing and summarizing medical research articles.
Novel secondary analysis of data.
Defining research questions and evaluating appropriate study designs.
Students are required to study medical research articles, learn some medical terms, and translate the results of statistical analyses into summaries suitable for medical professionals and for the general public.
Students will be expected to review medical articles published by non-UK research groups.
-To understand the relevance of generalized linear models in analysis of medical data, and good practice in fitting and interpreting such models.
-To understand the analysis of survival data from medical studies, and good practice in fitting and interpreting such models.
-To appreciate the particular study the role of statistics in the design.
Appreciation of the role of statistics in the design and analysis of studies addressing questions related to health and other aspects of society.
Competence in using descriptive statistics, generalized linear models and survival analysis to investigate and summarise data.
| Type | Required | Optional |
|---|---|---|
| Lectures | 30 sessions of 1 hour (25%) | 2 sessions of 1 hour |
| Practical classes | 5 sessions of 1 hour (4%) | |
| Private study | 85 hours (71%) | |
| Total | 120 hours |
Study of advanced topics, weekly revision of lecture notes and materials, wider reading, practice exercises.
No further costs have been identified for this module.
You do not need to pass all assessment components to pass the module.
Students can register for this module without taking any assessment.
| Weighting | Study time | Eligible for self-certification | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group Project | 10% | 15 hours | No |
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Due in Term 2 Week 6. |
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| Individual Project | 10% | 15 hours | Yes (extension) |
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Due in Term 2 Week 10. |
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| In-person Examination | 80% | No | |
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The examination will contain one compulsory question on the advanced topic and four additional questions of which the best marks of TWO questions will be used to calculate your grade.
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| Weighting | Study time | Eligible for self-certification | |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-person Examination - Resit | 100% | No | |
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The examination will contain one compulsory question on the advanced topic and four additional questions of which the best marks of TWO questions will be used to calculate your grade. ~Platforms - Moodle |
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Marked assignments will be available for viewing at the support office within 20 working days of the submission deadline. Cohort level feedback and solutions will be provided, and students will be given the opportunity to receive feedback via face-to-face meetings.
Solutions and cohort level feedback will be provided for the examination.
Either ST218 and ST219 or ST220. Menu does not allow this.
For M.Sc students, ST952.
ST346 is strongly recommended.
This module is Optional for:
This module is Option list A for:
This module is Option list B for:
This module is Option list D for:
This module is Option list E for:
This module is Option list F for: